


387. mercury

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [263]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 07:04:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10381224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: In the wee hours of the morning -- or maybe just very, very late at night -- the Manning clan flies back to Canada.





	

From this high above the ground, the cities aren’t anything but a blur of light through cloudcover. Four hours from Mexico to Canada by plane; the sun rises in seven hours, maybe, maybe less time than that once they get to Canada. Helena watches the clouds roll by them, unfeeling and soft. She sits up straight in her seat to look at the rest of the plane, but they’re all asleep – even Siobhan in the seat next to her, her head tilted straight back against the headrest. She frowns in her sleep. She isn’t moving at all. Helena, when she sleeps, is all tosses and turns. Siobhan is stone.

Helena goes back to looking out the window. She wishes Sarah had the seat next to her. Sarah could have used Helena’s shoulder to sleep on; Helena would have sat very still for her, holding her breath. Helena knows her shoulder is all bones but she would have let Sarah use it anyways.

But no: Sarah is four rows back and three seats to the right, in the aisle, impossible to see unless Helena tilts way back and cranes her neck – there.

Sarah is awake too. When she sees Helena looking at her she gives her a tired and complicated facial expression; it’s either _turn around meathead_ or _this flight sure is long, yeah?_ or maybe just _hello there, I’m exhausted_. Helena is bad at understanding faces. She lets her tongue slowly slide out of her mouth, until it’s pointed straight at Sarah. Sarah bites her lip to keep from laughing, looks at the snoring man next to her before slowly raising one of her fingers to Helena. Helena raises a different finger. Sarah bites her lip harder, shakes her head, and mouths _never mind_.

_Hello sestra_ , Helena mouths.

_Turn around_ , Sarah says silently in response, which means her face was probably the first one, which means Helena is good at faces after all. She does not turn around. Instead she unbuckles her seatbelt – the little light is off, she saw it turn off – and flops over her seatback. She waves. The woman behind her makes a little jump and burbles to herself in her sleep, but doesn’t wake up.

Sarah covers her face with one hand but she’s shaking, which means she’s laughing, which means Helena is doing good. Helena beams—

—and abruptly lands back in her seat. “Put your seatbelt back on and _do_ not look anywhere but the seat in front of you,” says Siobhan, eyes still closed, completely unmoving except for her hand clenched in Helena’s shirt. “And close your bloody window, for goodness’ sakes.”

Helena clicks her seatbelt back in moodily. She wishes _very much_ that Sarah had the seat next to her.

The window shushes closed, and the airplane is back to being dark and loud with breathing. Helena hadn’t been thinking about it before, because of the window, but she’s thinking about it now: how dark the plane is, and her seatbelt, and the weight of Siobhan between Helena and a way out. If Sarah had the seat next to her Sarah would get it, probably. She never saw the box but she saw the cage and she would get it.

Siobhan is breathing steady, but Helena isn’t sure if that means anything anymore. She unbuckles her seatbelt anyways – quiet! – and slowly leans back in her seat. Sarah’s eyes flick from the seat in front of her over to Helena and she smirks. _You’re dead_ , she mouths.

Helena doesn’t say anything, just leans her cheek against the back of her seat and watches Sarah. Sarah is here – right here, not behind a cage wall or through a window in Helena’s cell. There’s nothing between them but people, and people are something Helena can break through. It’s okay. As long as Sarah is there.

The smirk has trickled off of Sarah’s face but she’s still watching Helena, eyes steady. Helena’s eyelids droop. _Go to sleep_ , Sarah tells her, and it makes something in Helena warm that she can read her sister’s lips. She knows what Sarah is saying – she can understand every word.

_You go to sleep_ , she says, but her eyes are closed so she doesn’t know if Sarah understood it. She likes to think that Sarah knows.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
